Quakers ask peers to block legislation
Friends joined with others to call on peers to reject 'extreme and chilling’ government measures
Britain Yearly Meeting joined forty-eight organisations in calling on peers to reject ‘extreme and chilling’ government measures.
In an open letter, the organisations strongly criticised the government’s move to return measures removed by the House of Lords from February’s Public Order Act as secondary legislation. These measures include changing the definition of ‘a serious disruption’ to ‘anything more than minor’. The signatories said the measures would give police almost total discretion over protests, marking ‘yet another significant shift in public order policing’ beyond the expansion of powers in the Policing Act 2022, and the Public Order Act 2023.
The organisations, including Friends of the Earth, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Women’s Institute, urged peers to back a rare ‘fatal motion’ tabled by Jenny Jones, the Green Party peer, to reject the measures.
This followed acute concerns among peers and senior lawyers about the constitutional implications of the use of secondary legislation to revive measures recently rejected by lawmakers.
The motion failed, with only ten out of 174 Labour peers supporting the motion, and many abstaining.
The amendments to the Public Order Bill will now be allowed to pass into legislation. They include imposing noise restrictions and changing timings, locations, and routes, and lowering the level at which police can interfere with protests.
The signatories said: ‘Week in and week out communities, charities, unions, and campaigning groups organise protests in towns, cities and villages which might in future be considered by the police to cause “more than minor” delay, hindrance, or disruption.’
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